


punk lesbian revolution

by punkrightnow



Category: Mamamoo
Genre: F/F, Hip MV AU, ceo!moonbyul, folksinger!wheein, president!hwasa, rockstar!solar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:27:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26231917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punkrightnow/pseuds/punkrightnow
Summary: A woman walks in, silhouetted before the lights like a black sun. Byulyi looks up, barely noticing the band behind her. Her hair is an electric green. The music starts.And she isdazzling.Based on the 4th universe in the Hip canon.
Relationships: Kim Yongsun | Solar/Moon Byulyi | Moonbyul
Comments: 14
Kudos: 93
Collections: Girl Group Jukebox - Mixtape Round





	punk lesbian revolution

**Author's Note:**

> Written for GG Jukebox Mixtape Round, inspired by Hip by Mamamoo.  
> 
> 
> been meaning to write for this au pretty much ever since the hip mv came out, because rockstar solar owns my ass and also i think punk lesbian revolution is a fantastic name. very grateful to gg jukebox for finally forcing me to sit down and do it, as well as for giving us some much-needed femslash in general <3
> 
> some notes, just quickly:  
> 1\. you may want to rewatch the [hip mv](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhTeiaCezwM) & [teasers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLtG5BpiSho) (also [this](https://youtu.be/1YuikOPoeds) one) for context  
> 2\. because this is based off of a mv, it's a bit ooc and the plot might require a Little suspension of disbelief  
> 3\. i have 0 experience of either the entertainment industry or punk rock, so just in case yeah i don't think this will be a great reflection of reality lmaoo
> 
> with that out of the way: enjoy!

The pub is small, quiet, and just a little bit dirty. Byulyi is sitting in the back with a glass of beer she does not want. Her eyes are fixed on the other side, where grey walls enclose a corner just big enough for a band, sound equipment scattered around it as if abandoned. She can afford better; she is only here to feel sorry for herself. Her eyes do not stray from that grey, empty corner.

The lights flash on. 

A woman walks in, silhouetted before them like a black sun. Byulyi looks up, barely noticing the band behind her. Her hair is an electric green. The music starts.

And she is _dazzling._

Eyes dark and wild, hands clasped around the microphone as if in violent prayer, belting her soul out to _Speed Up Losers_ for an audience of at most seven—there is a sharp, hot wrench in Byulyi’s gut, a kind of burning feeling she hasn’t felt for a very long time. The world falls away until it’s just her and the woman’s voice: raw, powerful, accusing. She watches in frozen silence.

 _Shut up. Shut up and listen to me,_ the woman chants, and Byulyi does. _Let’s run. Let’s run, let’s run, let’s run, let’s run._

The end of the set comes quickly and quietly, to much less applause than it deserves. Byulyi does not care. She has decided to run.

“Hey,” she says, walking up just as the band is leaving. The woman turns and looks straight at her, eyes sharp and smoldering beneath smokey lids. “Hey, uh—”

“Kim Yongsun,” the woman supplies, before the question can make it out of Byulyi’s mouth.

“Moon Byulyi,” Byulyi responds automatically. It’s all she can do for a moment, before she remembers why she’s here. “Yongsun-sshi, can I ask if you’d be interested in…” She pauses. There is a name she could use here—is used to using—but she is _running,_ not using, not being used.

Yongsun’s eyebrow arches. “Yes?”

Byulyi is running.

“I’m Moon Byulyi. I love music. I think you do too,” Byulyi says. It feels like the most honest thing she’s said in a long time. “Do you want to make music with me?”

Yongsun’s gaze is piercing. It stays trained unreadably on Byulyi’s face, never once dropping to her tailored suit, silver wristwatch, ring-crowded fingers. Byulyi wants more than anything to know what she sees.

“Fine,” she says at last, and something on Byulyi’s shoulders lifts. There is no uncertainty in her voice; Byulyi wonders if this woman has ever been uncertain in her life.

She reaches out a hand. Yongsun takes it, gripping firmly. When they shake, it feels like the whole world is shaking with them.

This is the beginning.

Byulyi quits her job the next day. It comes with a lot of questions, paperwork, and silent judgement, but she doesn’t mind. It’s not what matters.

“So what are you doing now?” a colleague asks as she empties out the last of her office. She keeps cleaning, shrugs, and does not look up.

“Music.”

Her colleague makes a noise of confusion. “You’re a board member for one of the biggest entertainment companies in South Korea. That’s not enough for you?”

Byulyi straightens, looking him dead in the eye. She is going to do things differently this time; she is going to be truthful. “I said _music,_ not entertainment. I want to make art with someone who cares, not decisions from an office for pretty teenagers I barely know.”

Her colleague blinks. “Oh. Okay.” Byulyi turns back to her cleaning, but he lingers. “You know,” he says gently, “it probably won’t be as great as you’re expecting.”

Byulyi looks away, saying nothing. She leaves the office half an hour later to whispers and averted eyes.

In the afternoon, she meets Yongsun for coffee and tells her about it. Yongsun just snorts.

“And you’re letting this get to you _why?”_ she laughs. Byulyi has never heard a laugh like Yongsun’s: all squeaky and embarrassing, but so shameless that you can’t help joining in. “It’s your world, Byulyi. You can do what you want.”

Later, as she listens to Yongsun sing and talk and laugh, she realises two things: one, that Yongsun is in fact _greater_ than Byulyi expected, and two, that she is right. It takes a while, but Byulyi has money, connections, and experience, and Moonstar World is set up by the end of the month. Her world, to do what she wants.

But old habits die hard, and Kim Yongsun is not exactly the easiest artist to work with.

“No stylist?” Byulyi echoes, incredulous, as Yongsun patches up her jeans with row upon row of safety pins. They’re sitting in Byulyi’s new, cheaper office, brainstorming everything from albums to marketing strategies. And it’s not as though the jeans look _bad,_ just… “Yongsun, I have more than enough money for professional styling. It’s what artists do. So that they can focus on their music, not—”

 _“No,”_ Yongsun snaps, eyes flashing. Byulyi swallows; she still isn’t used to the sheer fire of Yongsun’s stare, to the tug she feels in her chest when it’s directed at her. “You just don’t get it, do you, Miss CEO? I do punk. Punk is about having some fucking _authenticity._ You wear what you want, sing what you think, be who you fucking _are_ —I’m not letting some stranger mess with me just because the mainstream thinks it’s pretty.” She narrows her eyes. “Isn’t that why you scouted me to begin with?”

Byulyi wants to argue that it wasn’t _her_ who scouted _Yongsun_ —that hell, you could barely even call it scouting. It was Yongsun who wrenched Byulyi in with her own incredible gravity, Yongsun who was so damn brilliant that Byulyi had no choice but to stumble blindly towards her.

But that isn’t what they’re talking about, so she shuts up and stands down. And if Yongsun hauled Byulyi in all by herself, she could probably manage her own styling, too.

She ends up blurting out something similar later anyways. Yongsun is too dazzling, and Byulyi too weak.

“How about—” Yongsun glances up at her, and she breaks off. She feels oddly like blushing. _Sing what you think,_ she remembers, and does. “How about something like Solar for a stage name? Because of your natural brightness and, um…gravitational pull.”

Yongsun’s lips part ever so slightly; it’s the first indication of surprise Byulyi has seen on her face since they met. She braces herself for another lecture, but none comes.

Instead: “Okay,” Yongsun says neutrally, after an unusual silence.

When Byulyi remembers this day later on, it isn’t as the day Solar got her stage name, or solidified a musical direction. Rather, it is the words _be who you fucking are_ ringing ceaselessly in her head, and the small, soft expression of surprise she had drawn out of Yongsun for those few long seconds.

Solar’s debut is not a success. It’s more or less what Byulyi expected, no matter how stunning Yongsun sounded in the studio, or how many grins they shared listening through the album. They score the barest minimum of media attention; they do not chart, anywhere; and the few performances and interviews Byulyi set up go overlooked. 

On the morning marking one week since the release, Byulyi walks into her office to find Yongsun already there. Their eyes meet almost instantly. Yongsun’s face is hard.

“Sales?” she asks simply. Yongsun doesn’t often indulge in pleasantries, but this is cold even for her. Byulyi’s stomach drops.

She tells her. She watches as Yongsun shuts her eyes, exhales, and slowly takes a seat beside Byulyi’s desk.

There is a frightening length of quiet before she speaks again, and even then her voice is barely above a murmur. “I didn’t do gigs at shitty pubs with a shitty band for the aesthetic, you know.”

Byulyi looks at her. They are subtle—well-hidden, perhaps—but suddenly she notices the tears in Yongsun’s clothing, the sallow tint of her skin, the tiny yet ever-present tension of her jaw. She realises that she does not know very much about the woman named Kim Yongsun.

She wants to tell Yongsun that it will all be alright; that she was not crazy that night in the pub; that Yongsun is too brilliant, too magnetic, too astonishing _not_ to shock the world into loving her one day.

But Byulyi is a professional, and professionals do not make promises they cannot keep.

“Yongsun,” she says, softer than she intends. Yongsun’s eyes flick towards her; their only sign of distress is slightly deeper bags than usual. “It was the right thing for me to find you, you know.” She hesitates, then walks closer as if it proves her point. “We’ll keep doing our best.”

For a moment Yongsun doesn’t respond. Then all of a sudden her hand jerks forwards, and Byulyi’s fingers are being gripped like a lifeline. 

Yongsun’s hand is neither soft nor warm, but Byulyi finds her heartbeat picking up anyway. “We’ll keep doing our best,” Yongsun repeats quietly, grip tightening.

Their eyes are locked, their hands pressed so unflinchingly together that it hurts. It is more than a reassurance—it is more even than a promise. It feels to Byulyi like an oath, a contract: a vow till death do them part.

The big moment comes one year after Solar’s debut, three albums into her career, and a long, tense, oddly intimate time after their vow. The start of the revolution, it would be called. When Kim Yongsun became distinctly, unshakably Solar.

The day it happens, Yongsun’s hair is half black, half startlingly purple, dyed in the dingy bathroom of the second office they downgraded to. Her eyes are smokey, brows bold, lips black as storm clouds; boots spiked, jeans ringed with iron, leather jacket covered in chains and safety pins. She is a gaudy, glorious scream of _PUNK IS NOT DEAD._

Byulyi thinks she is beautiful.

“You’re gonna fucking kill it,” she yells over the noise of the performance before them, grinning when the staff side-eye her. She is talking to the whole band, technically—they do hire accompanists—but her focus is still on Yongsun, the sun around which it sometimes seems her whole world rotates.

 _“Fuck_ yeah!” Yongsun shouts, smiling wide and vicious, and the accompanists shout with her. She is just that kind of person, just that kind of force of nature.

Byulyi watches them file onstage, past the metal railings into a sea of lights and cheering. They’re filming for the kind of band survival show she likes to roll her eyes at, but this time Yongsun is in it, and it took all of Byulyi’s efforts to secure her a spot.

Over the monitor, she watches as Yongsun answers the hosts’ questions, speaking in measured tones and her unique brand of quiet confidence. There are a few whoops, polite applause, and silence as the band sets up.

Then Yongsun starts singing, and Byulyi has never seen the trust she’s put into someone returned so fully, so fiercely, so radiantly.

Yongsun sings of hierarchy and bigotry and anarchy; of anger and loathing and devastation. It is her own song, personally approved by Byulyi over a dozen coffees and late-night meetings, but Yongsun on stage is a whole other beast. Set ablaze by the eyes of the audience, wielding violence like art in every movement, hurling lyrics like flaming arrows into the crowd with pure skill and fervor—she is an artist, a genius, an innovator; a warrior, a tyrant of the stage, a revolutionary.

When the song ends, when Yongsun has belted out her last explosive note, at first there is silence. There is only Yongsun, panting fiery and triumphant over a room of deathly quiet. And then—as if coming to life for the first time—the audience breaks into applause, so thunderous it feels like they could bring the whole building down without caring.

Yongsun does not smile. Yongsun does not even bow. She just stares into the camera, eyes blazing, until at last dropping a _thank you_ into the microphone and walking off.

Backstage, Byulyi suppresses what is either the widest smile she’s ever broken into or a flood of tears. She is listening to the audience still: _Solar, Solar, Solar,_ they are chanting.

The video is shared once. And again, and again, and again. The whole country holds its breath when Yongsun stares at them, feels the burn of her voice in their ears and minds.

Yongsun is no longer Byulyi’s secret. She is everybody’s—she is _Solar, Solar, Solar._

Some artists are what people call one-hit wonders. Solar is not. Solar is just _wonder,_ through and through.

One week after her first viral performance, Solar delivers another, on the same show—and another, and another. With each performance comes millions more views, millions more fans, just _millions,_ wearing her clothes and singing her songs and sometimes thinking her thoughts, too. She is just as raw and electric as that night in the pub, but more. She is the best she has ever been and only improves.

A few months into this success, Byulyi rents out a new office. She puts four of their records frame-to-frame on the wall, and one trophy on an empty shelf by a row of glass chairs. They will fill up soon.

“I miss our old chair,” Yongsun says suddenly during a meeting one day, as Byulyi is mechanically noting down ideas. She looks up; Yongsun’s head is angled away, gazing out of the window, and Byulyi realises with a frown that she had expected her to be already looking back.

“Really?” she snorts. “It was old, broken, and probably a nesting ground for cockroaches. I don’t.”

Yongsun shrugs. She seems subdued, somehow. “It was comfortable. I was used to it.”

Byulyi watches this strange, subdued woman gaze out at strange, foreign scenery, newly dyed hair shining glacial blue in the office’s cold lighting. It is half-and-half, still; the style became iconic after her first performance, and Byulyi would be an idiot not to capitalize on that.

Byulyi wonders all of a sudden if maybe Yongsun has a point.

“I mean, I’m still here,” she says, in her best attempt at nonchalance. “And you’re still here, too. We can just keep being who we are, keep…keep doing our best.”

Yongsun turns towards her. Byulyi wonders if she’s remembering the same conversations in the same offices, if Byulyi’s eyes are betraying what she’s left unspoken. 

Yongsun’s are not.

“Yeah,” she hums just as nonchalantly, looking away again. Sometimes Byulyi feels like she’s at an unfair disadvantage, when one look from Yongsun is enough for her to bare her soul while Yongsun’s remains as inscrutable as ever.

Later, when Yongsun is laughing as squeakily and stupidly as she always has, Byulyi shuts her eyes and lets those feelings sink to the back of her mind. Solar is taking the world by storm, and Byulyi is keeping it that way. They are too busy for feelings.

Then, soon, they are too busy for anything. 

Byulyi attends as many concerts as she can. Sends endless encouragement over KaTalk. Savours each meeting as if it’s their last. But it’s not enough—Moonstar World flourishes, Solar flourishes, until Byulyi and Yongsun are footnotes to their respective creations.

The earth keeps turning.

Concerts. Sold-out albums. Platinum certifications. Critical acclaim. The world keeps its claws sunk deeply into Solar’s brilliance, refusing to let go for years and years. Byulyi doesn’t blame them—Solar has always been the flame that will not stop burning. And every further success is fuel to her fire, until she is the brightest, hottest thing in South Korea.

It becomes commonplace to see people walking around with spikes, chains, and safety pins, more often than not even sewn on by hand. (“If it matters, do it yourself,” Solar says in an interview with millions of views, millions of people learning that maybe punk _is_ alive, after all.) Surveys find LGBT+ acceptance at an all time high, as a dozen blockbuster films come out with impassioned, emboldened messages of loving who you love and being who you are. _(Fuck that!_ Solar chants in a chart-topping single about heteronormativity, alongside a legion of fans and people finally given a voice.) The doors she thrust open for rock and roll see a thousand artists, new and old, running at last into mainstream musical success. _(The K-rock scene is garnering worldwide acclaim in perhaps the largest instance of the “Hallyu Effect” to date,_ writes a Billboard columnist. _This is no doubt thanks to Kim Yongsun, the artist the world knows best as Solar.)_ It is even theorized that the election of Ahn Hwasa, the youngest president the world has seen, was primarily due to the spread of Solar’s punk ideology. (“Fuck the establishment, fuck everything, fuck our stupid, dated government,” she is filmed muttering privately to Byulyi by Dispatch, in a clip that goes on to stir up widespread political debate.)

It is a lot.

It is everything Byulyi could’ve wanted, that night in the distant past. It is everything she needed to prove her ex-colleagues wrong. It is everything Yongsun deserved, everything Byulyi could’ve imagined to give her. It is a true punk revolution.

Byulyi sits in her office as its walls and shelves grow fuller, and something within her grows hollower and hollower.

“She’s just busy,” Wheein tells her, shrugging, in the after-party of her third album release. As Solar rose further and further into the limelight over the years, Byulyi in turn began experimenting with artists in everything from folk to pop; Jung Wheein is her best friend among them, as well as a leading figure in what the media has branded a ‘hippie revolt against the punk mainstream’. 

_This has all just gotten so damn_ big, Byulyi wants to tell Yongsun. She imagines exchanging wry smiles, talking over cheap cups of coffee, laughing backstage over the sound of another band nearing poverty. Sometimes she wishes there was a way for them to be successful without everything that came with it. She wants to tell her that, too.

“Yeah,” she says to Wheein instead, somewhat listlessly.

Wheein observes her. She is shrewder than she acts on stage, than the media gives her credit for. “When’s the last time you saw her?”

Byulyi saw Solar yesterday at a board meeting. Byulyi feels like she hasn’t seen Yongsun in a long time.

“I don’t know,” she says truthfully.

Wheein sighs. Then, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world: “Well, you’re in love with her, aren’t you? Maybe you should figure that out sometime instead of whining about it to me.”

It is the careless way Wheein says it that gets her.

“I’m not—” Byulyi manages to start, before realising that it feels like a lie. She thinks of that night; of that small, soft surprise; of that vow over clenched hands; of the churning feeling that erupts in her chest whenever they meet eyes.

“Oh,” she says quietly. 

A phone rings. Byulyi jolts, hand darting to her pocket, but it’s Wheein that ends up pulling out the source of the noise. She swallows her disappointment.

“Sorry,” Wheein says knowingly, glancing down. Her face brightens; Byulyi suppresses the urge to roll her eyes. “Wait, give me a sec, I have to get this—it’s the president.”

“That is an old, dumb joke and you know it,” Byulyi grumbles, ignoring the jealousy that rises in her throat. “I _know_ it’s just your girlfriend.”

Wheein just smiles mysteriously, picking up with a chirpy “yo, Hyejin!”. Byulyi watches the way her mouth softens into a smile, eyes crinkling, entire face lighting up as if flipping a switch. Byulyi thinks about what it would be to look like that: so in love. So wrapped up in someone else that the rest of the world stops mattering. Wheein is smiling like nothing can bring her down, like she and Hyejin, whoever Hyejin is, exist in a universe above everybody else’s.

“Okay, okay, bye—love you too,” she finishes eventually, hanging up. “Alright, where were we?”

The emptiness Byulyi feels at this point is almost as profound as the emptiness she’d felt at her last job, all those years ago. Watching Wheein tilt her head in question, still visibly, casually glowing, is like a second awakening.

Simpler. Subtler. But just as powerful, just as much of a revolution. Byulyi will stop whining to Wheein; Byulyi will figure things out.

_We’ll keep doing our best._

_Be who you fucking are._

_It’s your world, Byulyi. You can do what you want with it._

Byulyi is running.

Byulyi hasn’t been to one of Solar’s concerts in a while. Yongsun stopped needing her years ago. She shows up dressed like she always is, in a tailored suit and coat, the one exception in a stadium of slitted jeans and studded leather.

The lights flash on.

Solar walks in to deafening applause, silhouetted before a fever dream of technicolour lighting. When she roars out her first note, the audience roars with her; when she thrusts her head to the beat, the audience follows. Her eyes are filled with as much fire as ever, setting the crowd alight everywhere she looks. 

She is still dazzling.

Byulyi stands alone in the middle of a writhing audience, watching the woman she loves tear the stage ferociously, beautifully apart. She sings songs they worked on together in their old, run-down office. She sings songs she worked on alone for Byulyi to approve in open-mouthed awe. She sings—and Byulyi drinks in the memories, drinks in the passion that changed her life, drinks in the miracle that is Kim Yongsun.

When the concert ends, Byulyi heads backstage, to the dressing room that Yongsun has still never let a stylist enter. She finds her barefaced and collapsed on a couch, iconic leather get-up exchanged for shorts and an oversized shirt.

Byulyi will always think she is beautiful.

“Hey,” she calls.

Yongsun’s head jerks up. Then she smiles, and Byulyi feels it like the first rays of sun breaking through a grey sky. “Hey. You saw the concert?”

“Yep,” Byulyi says simply.

Yongsun watches her. Abruptly, she jumps up, snatching Byulyi’s wrist and pulling her towards the door. Byulyi’s chest twinges. “C’mon,” she says. “Let’s take a walk. Feels like you haven’t been here in ages.”

The route they take around the stadium is random, more or less. Byulyi spots the dent where Yongsun once hurled a microphone, the seat she took for Yongsun’s first stage, the place they stood together at a concert before Yongsun had even debuted. Before Byulyi had had anything but faith to back it all up.

They do not talk. The concert lights are still on, the staff still cleaning out the stands. Yongsun is quiet, a queen taking in her kingdom.

“I think I’m quitting my job,” Byulyi says into the silence.

Yongsun freezes and turns around, eyes wide. Byulyi meets her stare head-on; for once, it feels like she can actually read her. 

“What? Why?” 

Byulyi shuffles, looking down. She can still sense Yongsun’s eyes boring into her, familiar and alien all at once.

She is not going to lie to her. Not here, not ever.

“Because I’m in love with you,” she confesses to the floor. “Because this job is keeping me busy for money I don’t need when you’re all I think about. Because I don’t want to do anything stupid while I’m still your boss. Because, I don’t know, it feels wrong to keep doing this when all the passion I had for it was really just for—”

And then she shuts up, because Yongsun’s kissing her, in true punk rock fashion—hands tangling roughly in Byulyi’s hair, breath hot and heavy over Byulyi’s mouth, metal lip ring she still hasn’t removed grinding harshly in between. It feels amazing. It feels better than amazing: it feels _right._

“I don’t give a shit about your stupid job,” Yongsun breathes, hands clasped on either side of Byulyi’s face. Like this, washed in the distant glow of concert lighting, Byulyi thinks that she looks like an angel. “I love you too, you fucking idiot.”

Byulyi searches her eyes. As usual, they are fiery, they are certain. Byulyi lets everything she’s built up over the years explode into one enraptured smile.

This is the beginning, again.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading and also to [moonfishes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonfishes) for the frantic beta as usual! ily bitch
> 
> you can also click [here](https://youtu.be/31lkJso6G5U) for the song yongsun was singing at the beginning if you're interested :)


End file.
